


One Week of Alex Danvers

by Inisheer



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: F/F, Gen, f/f and gen because it's multiple pieces, flashfic, i know it can't be both at once
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-29 21:58:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11449881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inisheer/pseuds/Inisheer
Summary: From Alex Danvers Week: seven short pieces about our favourite alien-gun-wielding DEO agent.





	1. Just

**Author's Note:**

> As promised, all the tumblr pieces get their AO3 import! Hope you enjoy.

_Day 1: Moment you fell in love with her_

_‘Why? Because she’s just a girl? That’s exactly what we’re counting on.’_

Her mother told her a story. In high school, she’d had a math teacher with a seating plan, who arranged his class according to their ranking in tests and pop quizzes. That would have been stressful enough, but Eliza Danvers had a different grievance. They were paired, two girls, two boys, the genders alternating down the line: no matter what the actual rankings, the top two boys were always seated first. And Eliza, who aced every test, who outclassed her peers in every single assignment, could never progress past the third place.

It was a horror story.

In her own math class Alex sat at the back, where her teacher couldn’t see how quickly she finished the work and give her more. Alex liked math, but she wasn’t crazy. She had no desire to sit and repeat variations on simple problems for forty minutes a day. Instead, quietly, she would slide other sheets of problems between the pages of her textbook, and work on teaching herself trig about four years early.

She didn’t remember where she’d first heard that boys were better at math than girls. She didn’t remember, either, when she’d first realised her math teacher believed it. She remembered Dad telling her it didn’t matter: Alex could be good at whatever she damn well pleased. She remembered Mom laughing.

Mrs Miller expected the boys to be better at math than the girls. Alex found this bizarre: she must be pretty good at math herself, to be teaching it, right? But she would say to the girls, ‘This is hard, isn’t it?’ and she would say to the boys, ‘If you’d only try a bit harder.’ Once Alex had heard her say to Molly, in surprise, ‘Oh, math is your favourite subject?’ And when the seventh-grade team was selected for a county math competition, Molly should have been on the team, but Alex found herself with three boys instead.

They breezed through the paper rounds and, just before Thanksgiving, got a day off school for a head-to-head two hours away. The morning consisted of pub quiz-style rounds in an echoey hall; they had lunch and made friends with the competition while the answers were marked, tense to find out which four teams would go through to the afternoon challenge round.

She’d never had much doubt that Midvale Junior High would be among them.

They were up second, so Alex joined the audience. She heard a couple of boys behind her discussing the teams. ‘Who do you think will win?’

‘JFK. Definitely.’

‘I dunno, man. I hear Santa Maria’s pretty good.’

‘Them? They’re just a bunch of girls.’

The Santa Maria team were, literally, a bunch of girls, in demure private-school uniforms. Alex couldn’t see anything _just_ about that. She whipped round to glare at the boy. ‘Excuse me?’

‘Hey, take a chill pill. Geez.’

Alex didn’t have time to think of a response. The adjudicator had walked onto the stage and they needed to be quiet, _now._ She slumped down in her seat, fuming quietly.

(JFK won.)

Guess whose team Midvale was up against?

Even in a challenge round – in some ways especially in a challenge round – Alex couldn’t by herself totally compensate for her teammates’ ineptitude, and it turned out their opponents were pretty quick off the buzzer. They ended the second round in a draw. The other team won the coin toss, allowing them to nominate the Midvale student their own team would go up against in Sudden Death.

If they’d had any sense, they would have picked Jason. Alex would never believe they didn’t _know_ he was the weakest member of her team. She thought it must be to prove the point, that the idiot from earlier opted to face off against her instead.

Even as the team captain, she supposed he’d written her off. Just a girl.

It was a particularly stupid way to get yourself knocked out. Alex beat him handily, and success in the third round against their now-deflated competition put Midvale into the final.

(JFK won.)

Maybe it stuck, somewhere, for years later. It did matter if people thought you were _just a girl._ Not because it was true, but because it was something you could use…


	2. Doughnuts

_Day 2: Favourite Scene or Episode_

_'_ _You never eat sugar in the middle of the day.’_

Alex couldn’t afford to be distracted. There was trouble: there was always trouble, today in the form of weapons on the streets that might be able to hurt Kara, and could definitely hurt a lot of other people. That was what Alex needed to focus on, not Maggie’s comment – what would she know?

(Plenty, probably.)

Despite her best efforts, the idea was determined to keep her preoccupied. But surely she’d know? That was the thought Alex clung to. She was twenty-seven, not twelve. Surely she’d _know_?

At five exactly, J’onn tapped her on the shoulder. ‘Take a break, Agent Danvers.’

‘J’onn, I’m fine.’

‘I don’t need psychic abilities to see you’ve got something on your mind,’ said J’onn. ‘We’ve got enough people on this. You don’t need to stay late tonight.’

He had a point. And Alex was unlikely to miss anything; they’d made no headway tracking the alien weapons. She might as well try to clear her head.

Two blocks from the DEO, Alex stopped at a grocery store, fully intending to pick up a healthy-ish snack. She came out with a box of Krispy Kremes instead. From there, she wandered along to the park, where she found a bench by a duckpond and scattered crumbs of the first doughnut to the pigeons.

She would have known. She wasn’t – she was a genius. The thought of missing something like this, something so critical and basic about herself and, if it was true, so obvious that a woman who’d only known her for a couple of months could see it – it was mortifying. And the thought of the implications: that was terrifying.

Alex flicked through her phone, looking at the messages she’d been sending to Maggie, trying to read between her own lines. Friendly. Over-friendly? What was it Winn had said about crushes? But she wasn’t some heartsick teenager. She never had been.

Calling up Google, Alex typed in, _how do you know_ and the search engine tried to autocomplete to _if your pregnant._ (“Your”, not “you’re”.) She deleted the whole thing. Ha freaking ha. She hadn’t been on a date in over two years. She’d never much liked –

Oh.

There had been boyfriends, in high school and in college; and there had been boys who weren’t boyfriends; and there had been sex, which sometimes resembled sticking her hand on a hot plate just to _feel_ something, and sometimes came with apologies and fraught conversation because neither of them could figure out what was wrong. If she’d just been uninterested in sex, or in relationships, she would have understood, but she didn’t suffer from a lack of interest. On the contrary. She’d always wanted – always been aware that something was _missing –_ and it seemed to match a space that relationships were supposed to fit into.

The problem was, they never worked. Like, really never worked. And between her doctorate and Kara and the DEO, at some point, Alex had given up

If she was attracted to women instead – Alex allowed herself to play with the thought; she wasn’t admitting anything – if it was women she liked, that would explain a lot. But it was impossible. She would know.

Wouldn’t she?

She noticed when women were attractive, of course, but didn’t everyone? That was just… checking out the competition, in evolutionary terms. Or whatever. She’d never been the girl to go around drunkenly kissing other girls, in college, and given the people she’d hung around with and the parties she’d attended that was quite a feat. (Almost, said a niggling voice, as if it had been deliberate.)

Alex typed the question in again and hit enter. She spent a few minutes staring at the links, then closed the page, and for good measure deleted her browser history.

How?

 _Could_ it be true?

She didn’t. She didn’t _not_ want it to be. Just to have that explanation, the relief of knowing, and the possibility of – what? Of kissing women, of having a girlfriend, of having a wife – Alex couldn’t think of herself that way. It was beyond contemplating. (But not, said the niggling voice, not exactly unattractive.) There was a big difference between being supportive of gay people and coming to terms with realising you might be one, and everything that meant.

And the thought: would a straight woman ever need to ask herself these questions?

Alex picked herself up, dusted crumbs off her pants, and set off in the direction of Kara’s apartment. She ate a second doughnut on the way. 


	3. Plaid

_Day 3: Favourite outfit_

_‘Wear something nice.’_

It wasn’t on the first thought that Alex noticed. At first everything seemed normal. She was in bed with Maggie. Only on the second thought did it hit that she was _in bed with Maggie_. It felt so natural she’d nearly forgotten, in her half-awake haze, how new it was. But – remembering the argument and her reckless actions of a few days ago – it was in fact very new, and fragile, and suddenly she was scared to move in case everything disappeared.

Maggie was in her bed. Asleep. But not for much longer: she blinked her eyes open, murmuring, ‘Hey, Danvers.’

‘Hey.’ Alex kissed her, then sat up, rubbing sleep from her eyes. ‘I’m gonna take a shower.’

‘Can I borrow something to wear?’ said Maggie.

She’d shown up last night straight from work (new), in clothes grimy and worn from a long day’s shift (likewise), and they’d wasted no time getting her out of them (also a new and exciting development: not sex, but sex-in-a-hurry, sex-as-top-priority, skipping past the usual waypoints of food and conversation to tumble straight into bed).

‘Of course.’

Despite her declaration, she was in no hurry to move. Maggie left the bed first, dipping to retrieve her panties and bra from the floor – the first bra she picked up got tossed Alex’s way – and opened the wardrobe.

She burst into laughter.

‘What is it?’ said Alex, scrambling up. Maggie shook her head, still laughing. ‘ _What?_ ’

‘I’m sorry, Alex, but… Your wardrobe is very gay.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ said Alex, wondering if she should be offended.

‘Well, first we have the multiple leather jackets, the boots, the practical hiking gear though you live in the middle of National City…’

‘I’m a DEO agent. I don’t spend all my time in the city.’

‘Alex, you wear DEO gear for work. And, finally, this wonderful collection of plaid shirts.’

Alex spread her hands. ‘So? Everyone wears plaid.’

‘Uh-huh.’ Maggie plucked a pale grey shirt from the rail and held it up. (Alex wasn’t about to admit it was her favourite one.) ‘You think everyone, straight, gay, or anything else, is equally likely to be found wearing this shirt? Wearing plaid is a lesbian _tradition_ , Alex. I bet you had a punk phase too.’

‘You talked to Kara,’ said Alex. That was too specific to be an off-the-cuff guess, even for the _great_ detective Maggie Sawyer.

‘Okay, yes, I did.’

‘And I think you’re pulling my leg.’

Maggie grinned cheerfully at her. ‘Go take your shower, babe.’

Alex saw the precise moment Maggie realised what word had rolled off her tongue; her girlfriend – _girlfriend –_ started like a deer in headlights. She could feel her own cheeks burning. People had called her that before. It had never made her want to ask them to repeat it.

Maggie looked on the verge of freaking out. So Alex only said, ‘Okay.’

When she emerged from her shower Maggie was in the kitchen. She smiled shyly when Alex entered, still rubbing down her hair, and Alex didn’t know if it was because of the waffles she was making or because –

Maggie was wearing Alex’s shirt.

Loose even on Alex, the grey shirt was decidedly big on Maggie. She’d rolled the sleeves up past her elbows. Beautiful.

(When she came out from behind the counter, Alex realised she wasn’t wearing anything _else_. “Beautiful” wasn’t the first word to mind. But food took priority.)

Once breakfast was eaten, they decided to settle in for a lazy Saturday. Maggie draped herself against Alex’s side, flicking through Netflix options. Alex struggled to pay attention. Her insides were doing somersaults, having Maggie pressed against her. Her bare legs stretched across the couch. The fabric under Alex’s hands could have belonged to any shirt, so she couldn’t explain why it burned her fingers; but explicable or not, it was an inescapable turn-on to think that it was _hers_ , to know that Maggie was _wearing her shirt._

‘Nothing’s catching my eye,’ said Maggie. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think…’ Alex said, and kissed the soft place behind Maggie’s ear. She waited, with bated breath, for Maggie to let her know whether or not she was in the mood.

Maggie turned towards her. ‘You got something more interesting in mind, Danvers?’

‘A couple of things.’

A swift gesture darkened the TV. Maggie flipped to straddle Alex, and lips met lips, fingers in hair. When she moved to undo the shirt’s buttons, Alex reached for her hands.

‘Keep it on?’


	4. Sisterhood

_Day 4: Favourite relationship_

_‘You are the only reason I’ve ever felt at home on this planet.’_

People at school kept saying, ‘Hey, your new sister’s kind of weird.’ They spoke sympathetically enough, or hopefully, as if Alex might give them the run-down about Kara and a juicy explanation for her weirdness. She knew the story about the beach party had gone round school. Alex was only glad nobody else had been close enough to see what really happened.

She didn’t know why she felt oddly defensive. Kara _was_ weird, and Alex didn’t even like her.

The little sister she’d never asked for sat at the far side of the backseat, nose and new glasses pressed to the window. It was only Midvale, Alex thought, only a suburb almost identical to the suburbs they passed every day on the way to school. They were driving through the eastern part of town now to reach the mall: Kara’s first outing, apart from school, since coming to live with them. She needed new clothes, unless, Mom said, she was going to live in Alex’s hand-me-downs forever.

Alex understood that. She didn’t understand why _she’d_ needed to come with them. What was she going to do, blow up the house?

(Tempting.)

The mall was bustling and loud, and Kara’s eyes grew to cue balls upon seeing it. The girls trailed behind Mom’s brisk steps. ‘What, they didn’t have clothes shops on your planet?’ Alex whispered.

‘I thought we couldn’t _say_ things like that,’ Kara retorted. Alex was always surprised to remember she did have a sense of humour. ‘And no. We didn’t.’

Their expedition round the mall started inauspiciously. Kara acted more like a tourist than a shopper: she wanted to look at _everything_ , including the men’s clothes, and the bookstore, the camping gear and card stalls. By the time Eliza hit the limits of her tolerance and frog-marched Kara into the teen section of the same store where she’d bought all Alex’s clothes before she was ten, Alex was almost dead on her feet with boredom. (Plus, her feet hurt.)

‘Just pick something already,’ she muttered.

Not quietly enough. ‘Alex!’

Alex wandered off. Easier not to deal with it. Round the corner she found clothes more to her taste. A black T-shirt caught her eye, emblazoned with the words _Cute But Psycho_. No way Mom would buy it for her, but when Alex checked her wallet, she realised she had enough cash to get it herself.

‘What have you got there?’ Mom asked, when she finally wandered back to join them at the till. One of Mom’s arms was invisible in the clothes draped over it, and the pretty checkout assistant was already running through more piled on the counter. Alex showed her. ‘Alex, don’t be silly. You can’t wear that.’

‘I’ve got my own money –’

‘That’s not the point. Put it back.’

Sulking, Alex did so. She watched the procession of Kara’s new clothes being folded into carrier bags. Some were unassuming, some – ‘That’s what you want to wear?’

‘I like it.’

‘But it’s pink. And it has frills.’

‘So?’ said Kara. Then, quietly, ‘Do you still want that top? Because I’ve got an idea.’

When they left the store, Alex hung back. Mom and Kara passed through the doors, rounded a corner – and she heard Kara strike up some ridiculous, diversionary conversation about Earth’s absence of unified leadership (‘You still have wars! With other humans!’) while Mom tried desperately to shush her. Alex darted back into the store, grabbed the top, breathed a sigh of relief to find there was still no queue at the till, and stuffed her new purchase into her backpack on her way out. When she reached them, Kara was muttering something about being stuck on an uncivilised backwater of a planet.

Alex considered feeling offended, but it was true, and Kara had helped her, so she only laughed and said, ‘I’ve got to show you _Tarzan_.’

‘Are you two done?’ said Mom.

When her back was turned again, Alex shot Kara a thumbs up, and Kara beamed. Maybe there were advantages to having a sister. Though she _would_ have to teach the girl better fashion sense.


	5. Recognition

_Day 5: Favourite quote_

_‘I finally, I get me.’_

Or, A Number of Things Alex Danvers Understood About Herself Once She Realised She Was Gay.

She remembered a TA at college all the other girls had crushed on, in a physics class where she’d been by far the youngest. One of her friends had complained of an inability to speak in full sentences while Alex engaged the TA in a lively conversation about thermodynamics.

‘Come on, you know this stuff,’ Alex had said afterwards. ‘Why did you leave me to say everything?’

‘I was too distracted by his beautiful face!’ her friend had replied.

Alex understood, objectively, what the appeal was; but though she liked the TA – he was friendly, kind to anyone struggling (not her), fun to talk to – she would never, of her own accord, have called him beautiful.

She’d put it down to taste.

After all, she’d been dating boys since high school. She recalled the first time she’d kissed one, at fifteen, less vividly than the then-recently-cancelled experience of flying over Midvale with her sister but clearly enough. They’d gone for ice cream; eaten it on the beach, sand in their hair, laughing. He’d been sweet but the kiss underwhelming. Alex remembered walking home, equally proud of herself and disappointed. Kara had seemed more excited about it than she was.

She remembered wondering why women would change their names for something so undeserving as _men._

There had also been the long-running saga of dresses. In childhood Alex hadn’t wanted to wear them, or she’d wanted to – on occasion – but hated the compliments that followed. It was women more than men – grandmothers, aunts, family friends – simpering about how pretty she was. How many boys’ hearts she would break. She had, though she’d never meant to, or understood how.

There had been a boyfriend who turned out, later, to be gay.

Little things. Scraps trickled in over time. A preference for feminine men; a dislike of pet names; why she’d loved the show _Xena_ so much when she was ten.

It had always been an effort to date. To make herself fit in. But it had never been hard for Alex, exactly, in the way it was for Kara. Kara would try and try again, in high school, in college, without the fatigued sense of pointlessness Alex felt about it all. Pointless or not, Alex was popular and admired and determined to stay that way: beyond the very real consequences for Kara of _not_ fitting in, there was a deeper, gut-wrenching fear of unpopularity. By midway through high school she’d learned to hide her punk tendencies –

The punk phase: was that part of it? The whisky, the motorbikes, the leather jackets, all these stereotypes Alex was amazed to find herself slotting into, though she’d had no idea who she was, or _what_ she was. Beyond the embarrassment of her own clumsiness, her own obliviousness, there was an odd comfort in learning about the aspects of lesbian culture she’d already claimed as her own. Being gay didn’t mean she needed to become somebody different. It was who she’d always been. (The embarrassment was acute nonetheless. She knew now what Maggie had seen, not in leather jackets but in something less tangible. The question was why nobody else had.)

– Hiding her punk tendencies in favour of more mainstream style. (To her mom’s relief.) Though she didn’t dislike them, she was set on not belonging with what they might have called the freaks and geeks crowd, set on sticking around with her smart, overscheduled, popular friends. (Even if she and Vicky – even if Vicky, basically.)

For Kara’s sake.

(Many of the freaks and geeks crowd turned out to be not-particularly-straight.)

She’d gone to a bar once, with the same speechless friend, and someone had mistaken them for a couple. Alex remembered, beneath her immediate denial, feeling oddly pleased.

Alex had thought her life made sense until she noticed it didn’t. But now it did make sense. Who she was. Who she was meant to be, and be with.

When she’d joined the DEO she’d got a drastic haircut. Alex had never considered short hair before: for her entire life, people had been commenting on her lovely, long hair. She doubted she’d have done it if not for the practical necessity. But when she had – it was the strangest thing – she’d looked at herself in the mirror with unexpected relief, as if the weight lifted had been more than that of her hair.


	6. Pod

_Day 6: Favourite badass moment_

_‘You saved the world. And then I saved you with your pod. You’re not the only badass in the family.’_

The pod was there for observation. So Alex had taken the opportunity to observe it. Only once, after everybody else had gone home.

She remembered flying. How could she not? Glad as she was that Kara had chosen to lead an ordinary life – safe from the attention of the Fort R’ozz escapees; safe from older, nameless fears of what might happen if people knew who she was – and seemed happy enough in it, there was a small corner of Alex that wondered about what-might-have-been. Kara could _fly._ Alex had flown plenty since, and always loved it, but a helicopter did not compare.

That was what drew her to the pod. Its ballistic, aerodynamic design, built to withstand flight through the depths of interstellar space, made it clear what it would be like to sit inside it. It would be like riding a missile. The closest thing on Earth might be a fighter jet; or a Kryptonian powered by the light of a yellow sun. Officially it was decommissioned, belying the fact that nobody was sure how to disengage the Kryptonian tech – short of totally dismantling it, and even that would be difficult to do safely. And it would be a shame, Alex thought, dusting her hand across the pod’s nose, to destroy something so beautifully crafted.

(Alex had recently bought her first bike – to her mother’s dismay – and tended to be more bothered by the loss of kit in the field than her own injuries, particularly if the kit was a really nice rifle and the injury only a couple of broken ribs. So sue her. Just because she wasn’t an artist like her sister didn’t mean she had no sense of _design._ )

The story about decommissioning was a polite fiction to prevent rookies (like Alex) from paying much attention to the pod (like Alex) or trying anything silly like, for example, trying to power it up (like Alex was doing now). [] She might have believed it, but it was amazing what could come up in conversation with a Kryptonian AI, and equally amazing what people left just lying around on password-protected servers.

Alex pressed her hand to the plate on the pod’s side and the screen came to life with a quiet chirp. She winced. ‘Hush,’ she murmured. She wasn’t _entirely_ alone here; there would still be security patrolling the building. There was also the potential problem of cameras, though on that front she should be fine as long as she didn’t give anyone a reason to check the footage.

Her Kryptonese was a little rusty, but it didn’t take Alex long to decipher the glyphs and identify the one likely to – there. The pod’s front shield shimmered away. Alex swung herself into the seat, running her hands over the dials. It smelled of dust. The seat was surprisingly comfortable, though she couldn’t help thinking of the claustrophobia that might set in once the shield closed over only inches above the rider’s head. It was such a thing, to travel from star to star, not fast – though it could move impressively fast – but slipping between dimensions in ways the human mind could hardly comprehend. Even Alex’s mind.

She could understand how it would be flown, though. That was simple enough to figure out, minimal Kryptonese or not. Like this, like this.

Oh, to have the excuse.

(Any excuse would be too terror-ridden to allow enjoyment, she learned, years later. Only when Alex had plucked her sister from the emptiness of space, pulled her under the shield, reassured herself of Kara’s breath and heartbeat – only then, steering them round for the return to Earth, when she saw it silhouetted against the sun’s light, when she saw mapped below them the entirety of her world, of her life, of everything she knew – only then did Alex remember the grace of flight.)

Silently she climbed out again. She powered the pod back down to its dormant state, gave it a final pat on the nose, and left it to sleep in its iron cradle in a darkened corner of the rock-hewn base.


	7. Sunlight

_Day 7: Free day_

_‘I can’t promise you a life without pain and loss because pain is a part of life. It’s what makes us who we are.’_

She wakes to sunlight.

Maggie is still asleep beside her, and grumbles only faintly when Alex slips out of bed. When Alex turns back she’s already burrowed deeper under the sheets. Usually Maggie is the early riser: but not on mornings like this, when Alex wakes with warmth under her skin, when she dreams lost memories of water, when she needs to _move._

She gets dressed as quietly as she can. Sports bra fitting snugly above a bandage across her lower ribs Alex would say she no longer needs, but the doctor who assessed the contusion yesterday thinks differently, and it _does_ sting a little when she stretches. Black tank top, matching leggings, the running shoes Maggie bought her for Christmas (bright pink). She grabs her phone from the table, takes a minute to remember where she left her earphones, and dusts a kiss across Maggie’s ear with a promise to bring back breakfast.

In the main room, Gertie lifts her head and greets Alex with a yawn. Alex shakes out an old ache in her hand, fills up her water bottle, pours clean water into Gertie’s bowl; the dog, too, will have breakfast when she gets back. Alex gives her a scritch behind the ears before she leaves. Carefully not looking at the second bedroom as she passes it, she closes their apartment door with a soft click.

Outside, she stops to breathe in the dry, palm-resin air of National City.

Then she calls up her favourite running app, plugs in her earphones, and sets off. The sidewalk blurs beneath her feet as she builds up to pace, dodging the few people out this early in the morning – shop-owners setting up, garbage men, another runner who greets her with a cheerful nod. Soon the familiar twinge in her left calf strikes up, but Alex runs through it, gritting her teeth, and before long it fades to a forgettable nag. Her breathing is deep and steady, heartbeat pounding at the back of her skull, and the chatter in her ears drives away darker thoughts.

At the top of a hill, half an hour in, where the buildings open wide enough for the light of the low sun to reach the ground, Alex stops. She leans against a tree to take a swig of water and catches a glimpse of a red-and-blue blur overhead. The people around her don’t stop to look up.

On her way back, Alex stops at the coffee place that does the plainer-than-plain oatmeal Maggie likes. Once at the apartment, she zaps the oatmeal in the microwave, stuffs half of her own pastry in her mouth, feeds the dog, and throws on clean clothes before Maggie can wrinkle her nose at her. While she clatters around the bedroom Maggie doesn’t move, though Alex can see by her brown eyes she’s awake. She sits on the edge of the bed and reaches up to stroke her hair from her face, then rests her hand on Maggie’s shoulder.

‘How’re you doing?’

Maggie laughs weakly and pushes herself upright. Alex pulls her close. Maggie tolerates the embrace for a moment, then untangles herself. ‘You stink.’

‘Come on, babe. I changed.’

‘You haven’t showered, though, have you?’

Not dignifying that with an answer, Alex shuttles Maggie through for breakfast. Gertie pads over and puts her head in Maggie’s lap, trying on an ineffective pleading expression. Alex watches her wife across the table. Better today? Worse? Maggie picks at her oatmeal listlessly, then catches Alex watching and makes a face.

Pain is a part of life. But it still hurts. Alex would do more than most people might forgive if she could take it from Maggie now.

Her own, her own is inconsequential. Tears on Kara’s sofa for a loss almost nobody knows about. How do you talk about this? Then she had to go to work. She can bear it. But Maggie carries more guilt than grief, won’t talk about trying again, while Alex crunches numbers and odds and tries to hold their life together.

Funny. That someone who hardly existed can leave such a space.

‘I’m okay, Alex. You don’t need to stare at me like a mother hawk.’

‘Maggie.’

Maggie’s finished the oatmeal, or enough of it. She comes round to sit on Alex’s lap. Alex can’t help flinching and Maggie gives her a wry look, then taps her on the ribs.

‘I’m okay. Not sure about you, Ms Can’t-Listen-To-The-Doctor.’

‘Ouch,’ says Alex, feigning hurt. She nuzzles Maggie’s jaw, then kisses her, slow and sweet.

Gertie breaks into their space, forcing them to separate, and Maggie slips off the chair to kiss the over-excited dog too.

Better today. Maybe tomorrow will be worse. But today Alex’s limbs feel pleasantly heavy with the weight of her run, and Maggie is smiling, and their apartment is shot through with sunlight.

**Author's Note:**

> Ugh. Now back to angst. I mean, *more* angst.
> 
> A few of my favourite things: raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, comments on fanfic and warm woollen mittens. (Did I get it stuck in your head?)


End file.
